Best holiday park in Scotland announced as Ayrshire firm takes top title

An Ayrshire getaway destination has bagged a coveted gong.

Arranview in the rural East Ayrshire village of Moscow scooped the Best Holiday Park award in the Scotland Business Awards grand final.

The prize was on top of their first place in the Ayrshire category which they won back in November – all of this less than three years after opening.

And owner Eric Sutherland, who runs the park with Graham Marshall, was beaming from ear to ear after hearing the news.

He told the Kilmarnock Standard: “We are really pleased, we never expected we would win the grand final.

“We were happy enough winning the Ayrshire final, so to end up winning the national award is just great.

“It’s nice to say we are best in Scotland!

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“Especially with us being so new, it’ll be three years in May from when we opened our first two wee pods.

“Now we have six pods and six lodges, with another lodge coming soon.”

The holiday park which is regularly booked out doesn’t have a single review less than five stars out of five on independent review site Tripadvisor.

And Eric has heaped praise on all of his staff who help run the park.

He said: “We bought the fishery six years ago and we then built our own house.

“Then from there we went and got the planning application to build the holiday park.

“It was a wee bit of a struggle, but we got there in the end.

“Our reviews have been really good, I think we have over 3000 five-star reviews between all the booking sites.

“It’s our staff that put in the good work, a big shoutout to them for their hard work.”

He added: “Even Frank who runs the fishery side of things has been helping with everything.

“He opened through Christmas and New Year, and every bit of money he made he gave to a Kilmarnock foodbank, it was almost £1000 he raised for them.

“He has tried his hardest, and all of the staff are like that, it’s a community spirit.

“We try our hardest, the bistro is doing well after reopening, and the fishery is doing well, we are just trying to have the best wee place possible.”

Eric admits having to close up the pods less than a year after opening due to Covid was a challenging time, but he reckons they met it head-on.

He said: “It was a bit of a nightmare, it had to be done, but it was tough.

“We just opened and we were trying to build the business up, and then there was parts of it that holiday parks were excluded from funding, but we got there in the end.

“We opened back up and we were booming, we got the benefit from people wanting to go on staycations.

“We have a lot of repeat custom, and we try and build good relationships and introduce ourselves and we look to make everyone’s stay as best as it can be.”

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